


a life without homemade cookies is a sad life

by elyteracy



Series: the future is uncertain (and what a sweet thought that is) [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Baking, Gen, Humor, Jeremy is Australian, Recovery, Stress Baking, all original characters are trojans, one (1) mention of past kevin/jean, very slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 13:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11944977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elyteracy/pseuds/elyteracy
Summary: Jean's first year with the Trojans, told through pastries and baking goods.





	a life without homemade cookies is a sad life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alondurr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alondurr/gifts).



> me at 1k: may be longer than planned  
> me at 1.5k: should be done soon  
> me at 2k: fuxk  
> me at 2.5k: i have given up on life
> 
> the teen warning is quite liberal. there is two mentions of sex. a few sex jokes, and some swearing. that's all.
> 
> edit: the translation footnotes do not function, i'm working on it. tomorrow. once i have slept. don't click on it, it'll say error 404
> 
> edit2: the footnotes fucking work amen, feel free to click on them!
> 
> join me on tumblr at [elyteracy](http://elyteracy.tumblr.com)

The smell of something baking in the oven is one of Jean's first memories.

He remembers being barely older than five, his nose filled with the sweet sent of apple pie, and his mom saying _Regarde, mon chéri, comme elle est belle cette tarte_.  [1]

He'd baked in the Nest, once or twice. Maybe a few more times. His memory is patchy at best, and hazy at worst. Lack of sleep and blood deficiency will do that to you.

He'd eaten with Kevin. Thea had joined them once. It was the first time he'd gotten an inkling of what was between them.

He'd ignored it like he ignored most of what happened in the Nest. It was better to pretend you hadn't seen anything.

* * *

Abby smiles at him from across the table. "Did you sleep well, Jean?" She asks.

Jean stares at his coffee. "I slept okay," he says, which is a lie. He doesn't want to explain that he hasn't slept well since he was eleven.

"I'm glad to hear that," she says and means because that is the type of person Abby is. It took some time for Jean to accept it, and sometimes, he still searches for the flicker of dishonesty on her face.

It never comes.

She serves him a slice of chocolate cake. "I tried, tell me if it's good."

Jean picks up his fork. _Too dry_ , he thinks, _should have been taken out of the oven earlier_ , and squashes the thought as fast as it came.

"It's okay," he says, instead.

Abby beams at him. Jean doesn't look up from his plate.

* * *

Jean's gaze glances over the cakes in the display. He never learned how to make meringue, he notes absentmindedly.

"Jean?" Renee calls him. She accompanied him all the way to L.A. because Jean is incapable of traveling by himself. He hates himself for it.

He hates himself for most things.

"Would you like one?" She offers once she's reached him.

"No. I wasn't looking," he denies.

Renee looks at him, eyes full with something like concern. He hates this too.

"Jean, Renee!"

They turn around. Jeremy Knox is waving at them from a few meters away.

His skin is bronze, his hair a mess of curls, and his smile is bright.

Everything Jean isn't.

What is he doing? Why is he out of the Nest? He isn't a Trojan. He shouldn't be here, he should be in the Nest, he will get punished-

"Breathe, Jean," Renee orders, voice firm. "Take a deep breath, that's it, you're doing well."

He exhales slowly.

Renee is kneeling beside him. Jeremy is standing behind, eyebrows pulled together with worry.

"Let's go," he says.

"Are you su-"

"Let's go," he repeats, cutting off Jeremy.

He doesn't look back at the cakes.

* * *

Laila followed him to the library. She is one of the few of his teammates he tolerates. Her quiet but firm personality makes her easy to deal with.

She doesn't ask many questions, it helps.

He is taking notes for his upcoming paper. The dissertation he is reading mentions a study which could be useful. He stands up. Laila glances at him. "More sources needed?"

He nods.

He doesn't know how, but he finds himself in the foreign books section.

His eyes land on a soft pink book. _15 recettes de tartes aux fruits_ [2], it reads. He trails his fingers along the spine.

"Oh, I didn't expect to find you here," Laila says. "I thought you were writing your paper on Sport History?"

"I am."

He leaves the aisle. Laila doesn't say anything when he comes back to the table.

* * *

 

Jean wakes up from a nightmare, gasping for breath, his lungs on fire. _You are in L.A. You are a Trojan now. Riko is dead. Riko is dead._

Jeremy is sprawled on his back, snoring softly. His cover is almost completely off his bed.

Jean presses his forehead to his knees and forces himself to breathe slowly. The sound of Jeremy's repetitive breathing helps.

Once he doesn't feel like he is drowning in his own lungs anymore, he gets up. Night is the only moment where Jean feels safe enough to leave his room by himself. He makes his way to the kitchen. He turns on the kettle.

There are cookies on the table. Store bought, probably. Jean tries one. It is disgusting. He dumps the entire box in the trash.

 _I could do better_ , he thinks, and goes to sleep the idea still in his head.

("Someone threw all my cookies away!" Ari DiNapoli, number seven, the Trojans offensive dealer, complains. "If I catch the asshole who did it, I'll make him eat the fucking cookies.")

* * *

Jean can stay alone in the dorms without panicking. It's a great improvement, his therapist says. Count the small victories.

Jean hasn't thrown in his face one of the degrees hanging on the wall yet, and thinks that's the true victory.

He stares at what he's lined up on the counter. He is glad the floor communal kitchen is empty. He couldn't do that with someone watching him.

Flour, eggs,  sugar and milk. He has found most of these in the teams' kitchen cabinets. None of them lock theirs. Jean can't even fathom the idea of leaving his belongings laying in the room.

Ari has oil. He uses it on the bottom of the pan.

The batter makes a sizzling noise when it hits the hot metal. _Le secret des crêpes, Jean, c'est que tu peux mettre ce que tu veux dedans_ [3], his mom used to say.

She'd winked, smiling. She had almond-shaped gray eyes. Jean has the same.

He throws all of the crêpes away before he even tastes them.

"Honestly, some guy threw pancakes away. Who does that?" Alvarez says in the morning.

"Maybe the same guy who threw Ari's cookies away?" Caleb, another backliner, says, from across the court, where he's putting his shoes on.

"Less chatting and more running!" Coach Rheman yells.

* * *

Tic toc sings the clock in the office.

His therapist smiles at him. He has big round glasses and a gap between his teeth. "This is a big step, Jean. It means you are finally feeling safe here."

 _I still panic if I leave the dorms,_ Jean thinks bitterly, _but sure, I can bake_. He follows the groove of the wood with the tip of his fingers. "I didn't eat them. I threw them away."

"Why don't you let your teammates try, next time?"

Jean hums noncommittally.

* * *

"I need to go grocery shopping," he announces to Jeremy in the locker room, after practice.

"Right now?" Jeremy asks, and pulls a face at Jean's answering nod. He claps his hands in forgiveness. "I'm so sorry, Jean, I promised Caleb I'd help him with maths."

Jean rolls his eyes. "You are being ridiculous. I'll just ask someone else," he says, though his stomach twists at the idea of it. Jeremy _knows_ about the Ravens never being alone.

"I'll go with you if you want," Koko, the team's subbing goalkeeper, offers a hand raised.

He's wearing a t-shirt that reads _I'm bisexual and confused. Not about being bi, I just never know what the f*ck is going on._

It does resume Koko pretty well.

Jean stares at him. Koko, as always, seems immune to his glaring, just like Jeremy. He just stares back with his huge brown eyes.

"Fine," Jean gives up. "We are leaving in ten minutes."

He starts to walk away.

"Jean," Jeremy calls, with a stern voice.  Jean turns around. Jeremy frowns at him, his arms crossed.

"What," he says, flatly.

"You could say thank you," Jeremy scolds him.

"That's true, I could," Jean acknowledges, and doesn't.

* * *

Jean is comparing two brands of chocolate when Koko comes back, his arms filled with various eclectic stuff.

"Why didn't you take a basket?"

Koko shrugs, drops a box of tea, curses under his breath, bends down to pick it up, drops a bag of chips instead.

"Just put your damn stuff in mine," Jean says, stuck somewhere between reluctant amusement and pity.

Koko sends him a sheepish smile. "Thanks." He drops his things in the basket, a box of condoms on top.

Sex is something Jean hasn't thought of in a long time. He's not sure how much of his disinterested is from himself alone, and how much is from his years with the Ravens.

(Kevin and he slept together once. It was a fumbling, messy thing, and they hadn't gone very far. There'd been a few chuckles, because they'd still been young and Riko hadn't been as bad then. But he'd found out and hadn't liked it. He hadn't been as bad, but he had still been pretty bad.)

Either way, Jean doesn't care about sex.

"I suppose it's true what they say, " he comments.

Koko tilts his head, confused.

"That bisexual have twice more sex than others," he deadpans.

Koko's eyes widen with surprise, and he laughs quietly. "I wish," he chuckles. "Ari's been stealing mine. I don't know with who he's sleeping, but he's definitely getting more than me." He shakes his head and adds a pack of brownies to the mess of things in the basket.  "The others will never believe me when I tell them that you do have a sense of humor."

They finish shopping in comfortable silence. Koko doesn't ask about what Jean buys, and occasionally makes a comment.

Jean finds himself almost enjoying the experience.

* * *

Jean resits the urge to throw the yogurt cake away.

It's the middle of the night. He woke up from another nightmare and made it before he could think about it.

He finds a piece of paper and a pen. He writes _Free Food_ , because no self-respecting college student will say no to a free meal.

He leaves it on the counter.

He spends the rest of the night turning, but the cake stays.

* * *

Someone throws their books loudly on the table in the library. Jean wakes up with a start, panicking. A hand touches his shoulder and he slaps it away. "Ne me touche pas!"

"Jean," Alvarez says. "Calm the fuck down. You are in the library at USC. You are in L.A. I don't speak a word of French and you better not have insulted me."

Jean lowers his head between his knees, exposing his back. "Tout va bien," he whispers. "Tout va bien."[4]

Alvarez cocks a bushy eyebrow. "You look like shit," she says. Her tongue is blue from the lollipop she'd eaten earlier.

"Thanks, appreciate that." He frowns, checking the time. "Why didn't you wake me?"

She shrugs. "Dude, the bags under your eyes are bigger than Laila's makeup pouch. Thought you could use it." Her brown eyes are narrowed suspiciously. "Are you okay?"

Jean, who knows the consequent size of Laila's makeup pouch, purses his lips and doesn't answer. He tries to concentrate on his work, but Alvarez is clicking her pen, drumming her fingers on the table, tapping her- "Stop that."

"Stop what?" She says, faking innocence, and clicks her pen a couple more times.

"This. Whatever the fuck you are doing."

"Not until you tell me what's wrong."

"Why are you being so insistent?"

Alvarez dramatically gasps, a hand on her chest. "I thought we were friends, Moreau!"

He glares at her. "Fine. I just- I get nightmares. That's all."

"See, that wasn't so hard," she says. "But you know... We are teammates, dude. You don't gotta hide this shit from us. If you need to skip a period to take a nap, one of us will get you the notes. Alright?"

Jean grips his pencil until his knuckles are white. "Yeah, I'll- I'll consider it," he forces himself to say.

* * *

He buys a baking book. He orders it on Amazon with his credit card, nearly jumps out of his skin when the packet is on the table when he comes back from class, a few days later.

"Hey Jer," Koko greets his roommate from the corridor. He walked Jean back to his dorms because they have the same class.

"Hey, mate!" Jeremy greets back, in typical Australian fashion.

"They delivered something for you," Jeremy says. He's studying at his desk and looks at Jean upside down. "Did you order something?"

"Yes," Jean confirms, because there's no point in denying it.

"Is it a dildo?" Jeremy asks mischievously.

"You are enough of a dick that I don't need one," he deadpans.

Jeremy bursts out laughing.

* * *

He makes chocolate cake, using the chocolate he bought with Koko.

Caleb takes a bite and moans aloud. "Do you think it's the same person who made the yoghurt cake, last time?" Caleb asks, crumbs all over his mouth.

They are enjoying the sun outside. Winter, even January and February, is mild and warm in California.

Jean doesn't look up from his book.

"It's possible," Laila answers. Every movement of her head makes the golden hoops on her ears dangle and glint.

"You are a mess," Ari complains. "Clean your face." He hands Caleb a pack of tissues.

Caleb wipes his face. "Thanks, Mom," he mocks.

"I'd never want you as a child," Ari mutters from behind his laptop.

"Behave, boys," Laila chastises them.

A few minutes of blissful silence reigns.

"So, do you think it was the same person?" Caleb whispers, trying to be conspicuous and being anything but.

"Does it matter?" Ari asks with a sigh.

Caleb grabs Ari by the shoulders, and shakes him. "Ari, dude, buddy, pal, friend, you don't understand, I would willingly die for them. I need to know who they are."

Ari blinks. "Well, I won't be the one stopping you."

Jean had given up on understanding the Trojans one week after his arrival. It has been six months and displays like this one comforted him every day in his decision.

* * *

"Have you thought about your classes for next semester?" his therapist asks.

He hasn't.

He adds a cooking class to his schedule, has a panic attack afterwards, but doesn't change it.

He feels weirdly proud.

* * *

Morgan ending up at Denny's at ridiculous hours of the night or morning to finish a paper is not an uncommon occurrence. It is well known on the team that she is a terrible procrastinator and has the organizational skills of an ostrich.

Jean accompanying her is rarer.

It's just- sometimes it's nice to have company after nightmares and he doesn't like waking Jeremy. Jeremy already does too much for him, and it worsens the ugly feeling in the pit of his stomach every time he asks him for help.

Morgan is awake anyway, it is a good compromise.

"Why do I do this to myself," she mutters. Jean doesn't say anything, it's a rhetorical question. "This is ridiculous. There is a difference between working better under pressure and being forced to work under the impending doom of the deadline."

Jean has always thought strikers were an overly dramatic bunch. He is glad Morgan fits into his analysis. (She isn't as dramatic as Josten and Kevin, but no one is as dramatic as Josten and Kevin.)

"When is the deadline?"

"My class at 8 am. It leaves me 6 hours to finish, which is enough. I'll just hate myself in the morning."

She buys him early breakfast as a thank you. "I'd kill to have homemade madeleine. My mom makes some amazing ones, but I haven't seen her in so long, ugh," she complains, her head on the table.

Jean looks up the recipe on the way back to their dorm, Morgan chatting aimlessly. She never expects an answer from him, which he is grateful for.

* * *

Laila and Alvarez corner him before he can leave practice. They are still both in their gear, which is highly suspicious. Alvarez leans against the wall, grinning at him. "Moreau, how's it going, my dude?"

The practice has been good. Jeremy and Morgan had gotten frustrated trying to get passed Jean, and he felt oddly satisfied by this small feat. With the Ravens, that would have been the minimum. "Not bad," he says, considering, and means it.

Alvarez nods, like he has said something insightful.

"Every year, the team organizes a Secret Valentine," Laila says. "We'd like you to participate."

"No."

Alvarez' grin grows. "Well, you see, you don't really have a choice. If you don't, we will tell Lucas you haven't been sleeping."

Jean glares at her, gripping his Exy racket. Lucas is the team nurse and has been known to bench players before for lack of sleep. (Morgan had suffered through it once. It hadn't cured her terrible procrastinating habits.) "How do you even know about it?" He asks.

"We have our source," Laila says, which means Jeremy has told them. He is the only one who knows how bad his nightmares can get.

"I'm gonna kill him," he mutters. "What's this fucking Secret Valentine thing?"

Alvarez brandishes her cap, an outrageously bright red thing. Inside, there are little folded papers. "Pick one. You gotta give the person on the paper a gift for Valentine. The price limit is ten dollars."

Jean picks a paper. "Fine," he accepts, under threat. _Morgan_ , reads the handwriting, and Jean breathes a sigh of relief.

* * *

On Valentine's day, just after practice, the team gathers. Laila and Alvarez are standing in front of a basket. "Time to give everyone their present!" Laila announces, smiling.

Jean doesn't pay attention until his name is called. He frowns. Until now, he hadn't realized participating meant he would get a gift.

He stands up reluctantly. The gift is rectangular. Jean knows it's a book the moment he sees it.

When the time to open the presents come, he watches Morgan from the corner of his eye. Her eyes light up when she opens her gift and finds madeleine in a Tupperware. "'uck, 'ey are goo'," she praises, her mouth full.

 _15 recettes de tartes aux fruits_ [2], his own gift says, taunting. Jean knows it must be more than ten dollars.

Laila catches his eyes from across the room and smiles at him. He doesn't know what to do with the soft and fond expression on her face and ducks his head, trailing his fingers along the title of the book.

* * *

 

He leaves a bag of cookies in Ari's bags. _Sorry for throwing your cookies away this one time. They were disgusting,_ he has added, as an apology.

Ari knocks on their dorm room a couple of hours later. "You want something?" Jeremy says with a bright smile. Ari blinks for a few seconds.

"I'm actually here for Jean."

Jeremy looks slightly surprised, but lets him in.

"You are an ass," Ari announces, "but the cookies were delicious. You are forgiven."

"What was that?" Jeremy asks, once Ari's gone.

"Nothing," Jean denies, but smiles a little.

Jeremy looks at him for a beat too long. "I think I've never seen you smile before," he admits. "It's nice. You should smile more."

"No promises," Jean says, which isn't a complete rebuttal. It feels like a step forward.

* * *

A beautiful apple pie presides in the center of the table for Jeremy's birthday.

"Jean bought it for you," Alvarez says, and pats his shoulder. "See, he has a heart."

"I didn't buy it. I made it," Jean corrects, and feels himself tense under the weight of the team's gaze.

"For real?" Caleb asks.

"Caleb, you tried his cookies last time," Ari says, rolling his eyes.

"Oh my god, you are right, dude. They were amazing."

Ari smacks his arm. "Caleb, we've been dating for a month, don't call me dude," Ari complains before realizing his mistake.

"Oh, that's why you've been stealing my condoms," Koko says, in his drawling way of speaking. "Please buy your own."

Ari flushes bright red and Caleb laughs loudly.

Laila cuts the pie and gives a slice to every one who asks. Jean receives more compliments in one evening than he'd ever receive the rest of his life. There's something vaguely warm unfurling in his heart. Jean finds he doesn't hate it.

"Are you okay?" Laila asks him, later, aware that Jean sometimes gets overwhelmed by the exuberance of the Trojans.

"I'm okay," Jean says, and means it.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 See, my love, how beautiful this pie is  
>  [ return to text ]  
> 2 15 fruit pies recipes  
>  [ return to text ] [ return to text the second time ]  
> 3 The secret of crêpes, Jean, is that you can put anything on it  
>  [ return to text ]  
> 4 Everything is fine  [ return to text ]


End file.
